2009.01.26

An Edible Yogyakarta Tradition

We will return to Penang, but for now we've got something to share from Yogyakarta, where we spent much of last week.

Jogja, as Indonesians call the city, is known for a few dishes, but its most famous is probably gudeg, young jackfruit stewed with palm sugar. Gudeg is eaten with (clockwise from 9 o'clock, above) rice, opor ayam (a sort of chicken curry), a hard-boiled egg, spicy buffalo skin, and tofu (in the photo the gudeg is nestled between the eggs and the orange-ish buffalo skin). Gudeg may not be the prettiest dish around, but it's awfully tasty. It's also quite sweet - we found that a nip of fresh chili taken with each spoonful lends a nice savory-spicy balance.

One afternoon in Jogja we went on a food crawl with Adzan Tri Budiman, a chef and Sumatra native who's been living and cooking in the city for the last decade. After guiding us through three eye-opening versions of soto (there's soto, and then there's good soto - more on that later) he led us to gudeg institution Gudeg Yogya Yu Djum where, after a few bites of the specialty, we cried 'uncle'. The original plan was to visit a couple more gudeg outlets for comparison purposes, but our bellies said 'no way'. So instead we did something even better - we headed across town to Ibu Yu Djum's main kitchen to find out what makes her gudeg so delicious.

Seventy-four-year-old Ibu Yu Djum (Ibu is an Indonesian honorific, similar to 'Mrs.') started her gudeg business when she was just 15, in the same tiny Jalan Wijilan shop where we tasted her specialty. While she no longer oversees the day-to-day, she still pops into the kitchen now and again. Her business has been handed over to family members like daughter Hariady Tri Widodo (above, with her own daughter) who, we're glad to report, intend to keep the Yud Djum gudeg tradition alive.

Yu Djum's gudeg and its accompaniments are prepared behind the eatery's second shop in kitchens that wouldn't have changed much since Ibu started her business decades ago. Everything is cooked over wood.

The staggering volume of ingredients that passes through these kitchens on a daily basis give a sense of Yu Djum's popularity: 200 kilos each of young jackfruit and female ayam kampung ('village' chicken, allowed to range freely) a day, minimum, and 2,000 duck eggs (10,000 on weekends and public holidays).

It's a time-intensive process, preparing gudeg. In the 'chicken kitchen' candlenut, garlic, shallots, salt, and coconut palm sugar are ground together to make a bumbu, or spice paste, which is added to coconut milk and cooked long and slow until it reduces to a thick brown sludge.

Meanwhile, whole chickens are boiled for an hour

and then the coconut-y bumbu is spooned on top. The chicken and bumbu are left to simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated and all that's left are tender bone-in birds thickly coated in a rich, sweet coconut sauce.

Next door, in the 'gudeg kitchen' (above), shredded young jackfruit is placed in a huge pot with more coconut palm sugar and salt - nothing else -

and left to cook over low heat for a full day. It's drained in a rattan basket for a few hours (on the shelf, to the right in the kitchen photo), and then stir-fried for about thirty minutes. The end result is caramelized young jackfruit that's infused with a double smokiness, from the palm sugar and the wood fire.

The duck eggs are cooked in a similar fashion - boiled, then peeled and placed in a pot with palm sugar and salt and simmered for a day. To make the buffalo skin salt, black pepper, palm sugar (are you detecting a pattern here?), and fresh chilies are ground together to make a paste, which is stir-fried. After the paste is cooked dried buffalo skin is added and left to soften and soak up the flavor of the spices.

'There's no secret to gudeg. The ingredients are simple and everyone knows them,' Ibu's daughter told us as she showed us Yudjum's kitchens. 'The flavor comes from the hands of the cook.' The hands in Yu Djum's kitchens are very talented indeed.

Nice article. The use of sugar in the various dishes is not uncommon in Central Javanese cooking, although gudeg in particular is known for being sweet. I haven't had the variety you've described here; in my experience the young-jackfruit component of the dish is also cooked with a coconut milk gravy similar to the chicken.
The hot chilies (cabe rawit) on the side are a must, as Javanese don't tend to cook chili into the dish itself.

Beautiful writing, photos, and food. The photos of the duck eggs with a little sand on them, really struck a cord with me. All photos are of clean eggs, but these photos told the story of where they came from - a real farm. Even the eggs, I purchase from a local farm do not look like that.

BTW, have you had the Egg Tarts from Golden Gate Bakery in San Francisco? If not, please do. My husband was there on business and bought some for his clients on my request. Everyone loved them. Can you believe he forgot to bring some home for me!

Oooh, gudeg. The only time I've tasted nasi gudeg was at a party years ago hosted by my first Indonesian language teacher, originally from Yogya. The sweetness of Central Javanese cuisine is a bit shocking (perhaps because the surrounding regional cuisines emphasize chili-hot ('pedas') over sweetness), but is addicting with piles of steamed rice.

I have to second Life 2.0's recommendation of Golden Gate Bakery egg tarts. They are definitely among the best I've ever tasted, right up there with Hong Kong and Singapore's old Chinese bakeries (unfortunately I haven't had the pleasure of tasting a KL one yet).

Pepy - very, very sweet! Delicious, but I could only take it maybe once a week or so. And it needs the fresh chili to eat with.

Danny - thanks. Worth a try, definately.

Morgana - Would have liked to have known Yogya in the 70s. It's certainly grown, I'm sure, but still has a fairly sleepy feel to it. Six million people but it sure seems like a village compared to Jakarta. The pace is slow and the people are 'soft' (this is how an Indonesian friend described it).

Life 2.0 - good eye! Yes, you sure won't find duck eggs with sand on them at the grocery store in the US! I have had the tarts, but long, long ago. I'm somewhat partial to Macao-style tarts with the caramelized top .... but that's been long ago too.

Ed - shocking is a good word for it, when you are expecting something overwhelmingly savory. We were already full when we sat down to this gudeg but couldn't resist spooning it up with rice...

Hi Jen - egg tarts often disappoint me by being too sweet. I like a nice eggy egginess before sugary sweet. Not sure I've found one in Malaysia to satisfy...

What a beautiful blog on the humble gudeg. I've not been to Jogja, and only had gudeg in Jakarta/Surabaya eateries like Ny Suharti and MBak Berek, and they were delicious. I can only imagine how fantastic Yu Djum's must have been!

You have to try Gudeg at Sagan Street in Jogja. Its not as sweet as any other gudeg you've tried. It sooooooooo delicious. Our friend from all over the world always rave about it after we took them there. Its worth trying :)